1. Field
The embodiments discussed herein are related to a technique for measuring a communication bandwidth available between devices.
2. Description of Related Art
With the diversification and complication of a network, a technique for accurately recognizing the network state is required. Examples of the network state include an available communication bandwidth. In a general technique that has been implemented so far, dedicated agents are required to be installed one for each in a measuring device and a measurement target device for measuring the communication bandwidth separately by the uplink and the downlink and perform time synchronization before performing measurement, which is not only time-consuming but also cannot measure at an arbitrary timing.
Alternatively, there is a technique by which only the measuring device is used to measure the communication bandwidth with the measurement target device. For example, packets differing in length between a local IP device and a remote IP device are transmitted, and the length and the response time of the transmitted packet are used to measure the communication bandwidth between the IP devices without differentiating the uplink and the downlink (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent publication No. 2002-217965). However, when the line segment is asymmetrical between the uplink and the downlink, such as an asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), the uplink and the downlink are to be differentiated.